Supreme Court instructs lower courts to apply Louisiana gerrymandering ruling to pending Voting Rights Act cases

The Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais centered on Louisiana's 2024 congressional map, which had added a second majority-Black district. The justices, while acknowledging that Voting Rights Act compliance can be a compelling state interest in redistricting, found that the law did not require Louisiana to create the second majority-Black district, siding with a lower court that had also blocked use of the map.

The ruling reinterpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which restricts how states draw districts affecting minority voters. According to NPR, the Court's conservative majority ruled that Section 2 challenges in redistricting should now focus on intentional racial discrimination — a standard legal experts described to NPR as difficult to prove. Plaintiffs are also now required to separate race from partisan preference when demonstrating that voting in an area is racially polarized.

After the ruling, the Court sent a Mississippi legislative redistricting case and a North Dakota legislative map case back to lower courts for reconsideration. Justice Jackson dissented from the Mississippi remand, stating that the Callais decision "did not address" the question of Section 2's private enforceability and that she saw "no basis for vacating the lower court's judgment," as Fox News reported.